The advent of digital media and analog-to-digital conversion technologies (especially those that are usable on mass-market general-purpose personal computers) has vastly increased the concerns of owners of digital content, including copyright-owners and organizations. These concerns are particularly prevalent within the music and movie industries, because these sectors are partly or wholly dependent on the revenue generated from such works.
A blockchain is a distributed database that maintains a continuously growing list of ordered records called blocks. Blocks typically contain a timestamp and a link to a previous block. By design, blockchains are inherently resistant to modification of the data—once recorded, the data in a block cannot be altered retroactively. Blockchains are “an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way. The ledger itself can also be programmed to trigger transactions automatically.” (see Iansiti, et al, “The Truth About Blockchain”. Harvard Business Review. Harvard University. January 2017.) Note that sometimes the term “blockchain” as found in the art is a compounded version of the term “block chain”, which term might be found in earlier art.
As changes occur in a blockchain environment, for example, when transactions occur, records concerning ownership of assets are recorded in a first blockchain ledger. When changes are made to the first blockchain ledger, other copies of the blockchain ledger, located on other blockchain servers, are also updated to reflect the chain.